ISM SEMINAR
Spring Term 2014
Speaker:
Natalia Levina (NYU Stern and WBS) & Emmanouil Gkeredakis (WBS and NYU Stern)
Title:
Exploring IT-enabled opportunities for crowdsourcing new knowledge production: An Epistemic
Stance Perspective (In collaboration with Anne Laure Fayard (NYU))
Date:
Friday 24 January 2014
Venue:
B3.19, WBS, Scarman Road
Time:
14.00 – 15.30
Abstract:
Novel IT-enabled arrangements for ‘open’ work, in particular crowdsourcing, have begun to
challenge established ways of new knowledge production and innovation in organizations.
However, current perspectives do not explain how possibilities for re-organizing new
knowledge production through crowdsourcing may be understood and created across
different organizations. Drawing on philosophy of science, the paper explores how firms’
enacted epistemological beliefs in relation to the generation of novelty shape their
engagements with crowdsourcing. The proposed perspective is developed inductively and
illustrated through two in-depth studies of innovation consulting firms, which considered and
experimented with crowdsourcing in surprising ways. The two firms we studied, InnoDelta
and InnoGamma, considered the possibility of crowdsourcing differently and only InnoDelta
decided to experiment with crowdsourcing, despite the fact that its traditional work
arrangements and approach to innovation were much more distant from conventional
principles of crowdsourcing than those of InnoGamma. We found that the unexpected
responses of the two organizations reflect their distinctive epistemological beliefs, what we
call, epistemic stances on innovation. The paper offers theoretical insights to understand the
complex social processes by which the emergence of crowdsourcing platforms for new
knowledge production and innovation are brought about.
Biography:
Natalia Levina is an Associate Professor in the Information, Operations, and Management
Sciences (IOMS) department at the Stern School of Business, New York University and a
Professor at Warwick Business School. Professor Levina uses organizational theories to
understand strategic and operational complexities involved in managing multiparty
collaborative relationships.
Emmanouil Gkeredakis is Senior Research Fellow at Warwick Business School and Visiting
Research Scholar in IOMS department at Stern NYU. Dr Gkeredakis is interested in examining
the dynamics of organizational practices of coordination and decision making and the
emergence of novel IT-enabled organizing forms, such as crowdsourcing, from a social
theoretical perspective.
Contact:
Alison Solman, ISM Group
Alison.solman@wbs.ac.uk
024 7652 4101
This seminar has been organised by the ISM Group and is jointly sponsored by the IKON Research
Centre.